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Russia holds about a fifth of Ukraine and has advanced slowly in the east since 2024, at a heavy price in men. Neither army can break through the other's lines, which drones watch day and night. Both now fight as much in the air over each other's cities as along the front.
The wider war, its history and each side's full account: Russia's war in Ukraine.
On 5 September Russia paused strikes on Kyiv for three days during a visit by American envoys to Moscow, then resumed them on 8 September. On 14 September Trump said Ukraine and Russia had agreed to stop striking energy sites. On 20 September Ukraine launched a large drone attack on Moscow during a Russian vote. On 25 September Trump approved Patriot missile production in Ukraine, Zelensky said.
Territory, and time. Russia wants all of the four regions it has declared its own, parts of which it has never taken. Ukraine wants them back and cannot retake them. So the war has become a contest of endurance: whether Russia's numbers, industry and willingness to take losses outlast Ukraine's manpower and its allies' patience. Every kilometre and every night of air raids is also an argument at the negotiating table.
Ukraine is outnumbered and holds. Russia pays with tens of thousands of men for ruined villages and sends missiles at apartment blocks because it cannot win at the front. Every city lost has been emptied and flattened. Given air defence, long-range weapons and shells, Ukraine can make the war unwinnable for Moscow; given less, it bleeds.
Russia's army advances along the whole line against an enemy that is running out of soldiers and press-gangs men in the street. It strikes military and energy targets, not people; civilians are killed by Ukraine's own air defence and by its habit of placing troops in towns. Ukraine's drones hit Russian cities and homes. The front is moving one way, and the terms will only get worse for Kyiv.
Kyiv's leaves out its own shortage of men and the force used to conscript them, the failure of the 2023 counteroffensive, and that its allies have never given it the means to win, only not to lose.
Moscow's leaves out its losses, the prisoners and foreign recruits it sends forward, the apartment blocks, hospitals and power plants its missiles have hit, and that three years of "advancing" have not taken the Donbas it set out to take in weeks.
Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.
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